Subject: Re: #1282 Re: Additional Copyright notices in IETF documents

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:45:19 +0200

Personal opinion: I think experience has shown that the limitation
to a single (C) in RFC 3978 is occasionally a nuisance, so I am
in favour of removing it. However, we don't want additional notices
that place any restriction on the derivative works rights needed
by the IETF, so we need to be sure that somebody (the IESG?) has
the ability to prevent that kind of problem.

     Brian

_______________________________________________
Ipr-wg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipr-wg

---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 09:48:07 +0200

Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> writes:

> by the IETF

Right.

Wouldn't that be covered by the contributor agreeing to the NOTE WELL
and BCP 78, though?

> so we need to be sure that somebody (the IESG?) has the ability to
> prevent that kind of problem.

It seems fragile to have the IESG review this, it is too easy to miss
things like this.  They've missed several additional copyright notices
in recent RFCs.

Personally, I think this concern is fixed by the NOTE WELL.  The NOTE
WELL gives the IETF a license to use contributions under the rights it
needs.  An additional copyright notice in the document doesn't change
what the contributor agreed to in the NOTE WELL.

If we need to do something to fix this concern, how about explaining
the situation in the IETF license?  If it would say that additional
copyright notices are present, they don't restrict on the derivative
rights the IETF has, the situation should be clear.

/Simon

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 06:49:48 -0500

Ignoring other espects of "addtional copyrights"...

> things like this.  They've missed several additional copyright notices

If this is a problem (in the WG's viewpoint), it would be nice for the 
chairs to mention it to the Tools team.

IDNits already checks for things like 2119 text that doesn't pattern-match 
what 2119 text should be, etc. I suspect that scanning for multiple 
copyright notices would be do-able, and would be helpful for IESG, 
especially if there are 30 documents on a telechat, a couple of which have 
been updated after Last Call.

It may also be helpful for others in the community (although others may have 
a little more time to focus on a specific document or document set).

This scanning might also feed other tools, someday (perhaps a "documents 
with additional copyrights" page in the IPR section of the website, 
automatically generated at submission time, or a note on the IESG telechat 
agendas that "this document has additional copyright notices").

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 14:32:01 +0200

Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> IDNits already checks for things like 2119 text that doesn't 
> pattern-match what 2119 text should be, etc. I suspect that scanning for 
> multiple copyright notices would be do-able, 

but if we are tending towards removing that restriction, why?

    Brian

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 07:45:30 -0500

> but if we are tending towards removing that restriction, why?

My understanding (please correct me if I am wrong) is that WGs and IESG 
would still notice multiple copyrights and decide whether the document 
should be approved with those copyrights in place, the way WGs notice IPR 
disclosures and decide whether a specification should be approved based on 
what has been disclosed.

If this is not the expectation, then please forget that I was ever here...

Spencer

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 15:22:35 +0200

Hi Spencer, Brian,

>>> multiple copyright notices would be do-able,

Certainly, if the notice contains the word copyright (and it would have
to, I think).

> If this is not the expectation, then please forget that I was ever here...

So I'll wait for a clear indication that this is desirable before taking
it any further for idnits.

	Henrik

---

From: Simon Josefsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 15:33:27 +0200

"Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]> writes:

>>> pattern-match what 2119 text should be, etc. I suspect that
>>> scanning for multiple copyright notices would be do-able,
>>
> My understanding (please correct me if I am wrong) is that WGs and
> IESG would still notice multiple copyrights and decide whether the
> document should be approved with those copyrights in place, the way
> WGs notice IPR disclosures and decide whether a specification should
> be approved based on what has been disclosed.

It would be unfortunate to create new IPR-related work items for WGs.
Let's try to make things easier rather than harder.

I believe the NOTE WELL text is sufficient to grant IETF the rights it
needs, even if there are additional copyright notices in a document.
Does anyone challenge that?  Perhaps an answer from Jorge would be
useful here.

If there is a loop-hole, I believe we could craft particular text that
goes with the IETF license or the NOTE WELL, that would cover that
problem.  But let's not assume we need to work around a loop-hole
until we know what there is one.

/Simon

---

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 10:54:22 -0400

The problem with IDnits checking for this is that it is the authors
that run IDnits. So, they aren't going to raise alarm bells, if there
are problems.

The problem with the IESG doing the check is that this would be rather
late in the process. If there was a problem with the extra copyright
notices, and the author didn't want to change, then what.

Or (hopefully) this is a non-problem because NOTE WELL trumps these
sorts of issues, in which case even the RFC editor could be given the
task of checking this prior to final publication.

Thomas